FAQ

From the deposit to launch day, the timelines are fixed and they are the ones on the rate card: Launch is 2 weeks, Growth is 4 weeks, Commerce is 6 weeks. Those are working timelines for a business that gets its text, photos and approvals when they are asked for, not best-case numbers.

Growth can be rushed from 4 weeks to 2.5 and Commerce from 6 weeks to 4, for +35% of the project fee. Launch cannot be rushed at all, which is a deliberate limit: at two weeks there is no slack to absorb a rush without something else slipping.

There is a clause about what happens if you go quiet, because a one-person business has exactly one queue. If you are the blocker for 10 business days, the timeline pauses, your start date releases, and you re-enter at the next open slot. You keep the deposit, you lose nothing, and I do not hold a slot hostage.

Less than most people expect, but one thing is not optional. You supply the text and at least 6 usable photos. That is a requirement rather than a hope — it is the difference between a $2,500 project and a much smaller one, because a site built on placeholder copy is a site you are embarrassed by.

If you would rather not write it, I will: copywriting is $400 a page and photography is $600 for a half-day, up to 40 retouched images licensed for your site, your social accounts and your ads. Both are add-ons rather than part of the package, so the package price stays a number you can budget from.

Beyond the content there is one real commitment: a free 20-minute call to agree the page list before anything is built. That call is the cheapest insurance in the whole process. Half the projects I have priced in my head went over not because a client was greedy, but because nobody wrote down what “a website” meant before we started.

After launch the small stuff is mine to carry: up to two content edits a month and two hours of changes inside the care plan. The one thing that stays yours — and the single strongest local ranking signal there is — is asking your customers for reviews.

It gets replaced, not patched. Every package builds a fresh site rather than repairing whatever is there, because inherited code is the most expensive thing in this trade and you should not own it twice.

Your content comes across, and moving an existing site is a priced item: legacy site migration is $350 for up to 12 pages. If your existing site is in reasonable shape I will usually tell you not to do a full build at all.

Your domain is never taken from you. Domain registration is billed to you at cost with no markup, and you own it from day one — including if you leave. That is written into the terms rather than promised in conversation.

One warning worth having: if you are paying for ads today, the ads do not stop the day you stop paying. Your ranking and your Google presence keep working and your ad spend does not. Build the site first if you can, and run both while the site catches up.

You do, from the start. Your domain, your logo, your copy, your photos, your Google Business Profile, your analytics. Not a hostage, and not a favour.

The interesting version of the question is what happens if you leave, so here it is in full: send 30 days’ notice, pay the final month, and take your domain, your content and your site’s source code with you at no charge. I will walk you through deploying it anywhere, within 10 business days of the final invoice. There is no hosting hostage and no migration fee.

The reason is not generosity. A site that stops working when the agency disappears is a site nobody should rely on, and a business that holds a client’s site hostage has already told you how it will behave in a hard month. What you are paying for is uptime and responsiveness, not a lock-in.

The care plan is the half of this business that the website is actually just the front door to. Every plan includes the same core, whether it is $150, $450 or $750 a month.

And this boundary is the reason the monthly number is worth anything: none of these are in any care plan — new pages, redesigns, new features, an SEO program, ads management, ad spend. Those are quoted as add-ons, so the figure never wanders. Growth adds a written monthly report with real numbers; Commerce adds store and payment monitoring and a quarterly store review. One exception worth knowing: ongoing SEO is $500 a month and it includes your care plan, so you are never billed both.

I am not going to tell you 30 days, because anyone who does is either lying or about to sell you something else. Here is what a local search actually takes:

— 3–6 months before you see measurable movement in calls and form fills

— 6–12 months to be a regular top-3 result in the map pack for a normal-competition search

— 12–18+ months for a genuinely competitive one

— Paid ads go live in 7–14 days, which is exactly why they exist

I do not guarantee rankings, and you should not pay anyone who does. What I can guarantee is narrower and real: the technical foundation will be correct, the listing will be properly set up, and you will get a report every month showing what moved and what did not — including the months when nothing did.

If you need booked jobs in the next 30 days, paid ads are the only honest answer and I will say so rather than sell you something slow. Setup is $1,200, then 10% of ad spend with a $100/mo minimum, and you pay the ad spend directly to Google or Meta from your own account.

Then it is a change order with a written price, and the process has four steps: you ask by email or on a call; I reply in writing within 2 business days with the added scope, the added price and the added or delayed timeline; you approve — a reply saying “yes” is enough; then I build it, not before.

The rule that protects both of us is about phone calls. If you ask for something on a call, I will write you an email saying exactly what I heard you ask for, and I will not start that work until you reply confirming it. It exists because verbal scope is how one of us ends up resenting the other in month three.

Two rounds of revisions per page are included. A third round is $95/hr — and if I am asking for a third round, that is usually a sign we started with different ideas, which is a conversation rather than a charge. You will recognise it when it happens, because I will use one of three sentences: “That’s not in the current scope. I can add it for $X, and it’ll push launch by Y days. Want it?”, “If it’s important enough to prioritize, I can take it out of something else. Which?”, or “That one’s free — it’s a bug in what I built.” The last one is unconditional.

Then do not stretch for it. A project you resent paying for produces a website you are embarrassed by, which costs you money twice.

There are two honest cheaper doors. The first is the $150/month care plan on the site you already have — if it is decent, that is the entire entry point, and it means we are already working together when the money is there. The second is one add-on at a time: $400 to have the copy written for your pages, or $1,200 for ads setup if the problem is leads now rather than a website later.

There is no payment plan and no financing, deliberately. A 12-month plan on a $2,500 project costs more administration than it is worth, and I would rather you have the cash conversation with me than with a lender.

If the honest answer is that you cannot afford a website, I will say that, and we can talk again in six months. That conversation costs you nothing, and you will not get a surprise follow-up sequence afterwards.

Good — then you are not starting from zero, and I would rather build on that than talk you out of it.

One question is worth more than any argument: what does a lead actually cost you there? If you can pull that number, this stops being a matter of faith and becomes a decision with real arithmetic attached. Bring the number and I will tell you honestly whether the website is worth it.

Two things most people get wrong about it. Ads stop the day you stop paying; your site and your Google presence keep working, and your ranking compounds while you sleep. And for a local business, most Facebook leads are actually driven by your Google listing and your reviews rather than by the ad itself — which is work the website would be doing anyway.

If Facebook is reliably cheaper for you, keep it. I would rather be right in a year than expensive this month.

Start with the nephew, because he is a real option and he will be cheaper. Two questions separate a professional from a favour: can he hand you a written fixed scope, and a monthly price for keeping it running? Any developer who cannot answer both is guessing, and a guess on a business asset is expensive later.

Use the nephew. Seriously. If he can put those two things in writing, hire him and tell me how it goes. The difference is boring and it is the real one: your site needs to stay fast, secure, patched and monitored for the three years after launch, and when it breaks at 9pm on a Sunday, whose problem is it? With me it is mine, on a same-business-day response, in writing.

As for being new — I do not have a wall of testimonials and I am not going to invent any. Judge us on three things instead.

The risk of hiring us is not that we cannot do the work. It is that we are new, so we have made it cheap to be wrong about us: the deposit is half, and you see the finished thing before the second half is due.